Sustainable Development Blog

"Tricks in Captivity" was written in the mid-1990s about a time period in which I went to Latin America full of idealistic concepts about promoting environmentally sustainable economic development, humanitarian assistance to migrants and refugees, and peace and justice for vulnerable and long-suffering populations. The idealism died catastrophically a long time ago, but the hope never did.

To celebrate the publication of my novel, I am launching this modest blog to share ideas that I still think are important....

ONE STEP FORWARD

3/30/2014﻿﻿ ﻿﻿

General Mills has responded to environmental conservation pleas, making major changes to how it purchases palm oil--a common ingredient in many personal care and food products. I am pasting below a recent email from General Mills:

"Thank you for your recent email regarding palm oil and the world’s rainforests. General Mills had already committed to striving to source 100 percent of our palm oil from responsible and sustainable sources by 2015 – and our purchase and use of certified and sustainable palm oil is already at approximately 50 percent. Coupled with our leverage of Green Palm certificates in certain markets, our overall measure of sustainable and green palm would top 75 percent across our global portfolio. But I would like to share with you recent updates we’ve made to further strengthen our palm oil commitment.

"This week, General Mills strengthened its expectations for suppliers on several key points, including:

· No development on high conservation landscapes or high carbon stock forests;

· No development on peat lands – regardless of depth – and use of best management practices for existing plantations on peat;

· Provision of traceability to the extraction mill; and,

· Validation of sources of fresh fruit bunches.

"Some provisions are new, while others simply strengthen our existing commitments with new or stronger language. But I thought you would want to know.

"General Mills will also continue to leverage its Supplier Code of Conduct – outlining expectations in areas such as human rights and anti-corruption – to ensure our suppliers accept only legally sourced palm oil from producers and growers who prevent and resolve social and/or land conflicts in a manner consistent with the principle of free prior and informed consent...."

Jerry Lynch, Chief Sustainability Officer, General Mills

1/10/2014﻿﻿ ﻿

Marc Hujer and Samiha Shafy have written a dramatic article for Der Spiegel contrasting two U.S. cities vulnerable to coastal erosion due to climate change: New Bern (North Carolina) and New York City. The article is "A Tale of Two Cities: America's Bipolar Climate Future",

New York City, following the lead of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is taking climate science (and last fall's monster storm) seriously, and taking dramatic steps to prepare for rising sea levels. (In contrast to New Bern....)

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7/15/2013﻿﻿

Berry Ritholtz writes a compelling argument that now is the time for local and national governments to take advantage of low interest rates to renovate our aging infrastructure:

Naysayers in the penny-wise-pound-foolish camp are those who continue to argue we can't afford any more public debt. And it has been the naysayers' stranghlehold on long-range planning which has ensured that nearly every significant renovation occurs ONLY after we have a catastrophe, thus maximizing human pain and suffering...as well as the cost of dealing with repairs as an emergency, rather than a long-term improvement plan.

Financing infrastructure improvement will also put people to work in good jobs where they will learn 21st century technical skills. So, like a smart homeowner, inspect the public infrastructure "roof" now--don't wait for it to cave in and leave the taxpayer with an emergency repair bill as well as a long, expensive stay at the nearest motel. Sustainable development doesn't happen by itself.

7/3/2013﻿﻿

Here is one of many opinion pieces lauding the climate plan President Obama laid out in a speech at Georgetown University: http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/28/opinion/field-obama-climate-change﻿

A political pragmatist if ever there was one, Obama apparently felt he needed to wait until he was securely in his second term before he could get serious about climate change. So is it too little, too late? Yes and no. The world has not acted quickly enough to stop climate change, but there are still things we can do for mitigation and adaptation...

...and to stop digging ourselves into a larger hole! Yes, we still have a choice between terrible climate change and catastrophic climate change, so kudos to President Obama for using sound science to set public policy on climate.

As for the climate deniers--their grandchildren really will hate them.

3/2/2013﻿

Cool conference in San Francisco: Compostmodern 2013! This year’s theme is “resilience” – designing to anticipate change instead of resisting it. March 22-23 at the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts.

See more at: http://inhabitat.com/compostmodern-2013-kicks-off-next-month-in-san-francisco-register-today/#sthash.p9yrI2a1.dpuf﻿

If you want to see an exquisite reminder of how vitally important it is to compost, I recommend "Dirt! The Movie".

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Carbon emissions have fallen in the U.S. to 1994 levels!

Just saw this from "The Guardian": "US carbon emissions fall to lowest levels since 1994. Energy-saving technologies and a doubling in renewables led to the reduction in climate pollution, new figures show."

Kudos to Greenpeace for waging a sustained campaign focused on loss of habitat for Sumatran tigers: when the keystone species is in trouble, so is the ecosystem.

But we can all do better by choosing recycled paper products, reusing furniture, and not grabbing excessive napkins at the fast food counter.

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8/8/2012

Join CarbonfreeDC and the District Department of Environment to find out how D.C. is preparing to mitigate warming-related effects in Washington, D.C. More info on the Aug. 15th event: http://www.carbonfreedc.org/﻿

To see how local communities and citizens are planning a sustainable future for the D.C. region, please check out the Region Forward website at:

http://www.regionforward.org/﻿

9/11/2011﻿

God knows I never expected to praise the Washington Redskins for anything, but I am happy to repost this statement from redskins.com:

"The Redskins and NRG Energy are bringing renewable energy to FedExField: new solar power installations have been integrated into the stadium and in the parking lots. The solar power system will provide a portion of the stadium's electricity needs on game days and can generate enough power to serve all of its electrical needs on non-game days.

NRG is installing three different types of solar panels that together will generate two megawatts of electricity. NRG is covering 850 spaces in the Platinum A1 Parking Lot with 8,000 solar panels.

Not only will the solar panels generate power for the stadium, they provide covered parking to protect fans from inclement weather....The installation will include translucent solar panels, sculptures featuring thin film solar technology and 10 electric vehicle charging stations."

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9/10/2011﻿

Mayor Gray wants Washington, D.C., to be the nation's leader in sustainability! Do I think that's possible? No, but I'm excited anyway! Check it out at:

www.sustainable.dc.gov/

8/29/2011﻿

Does anybody have a clue how to rein in corporate control of Congress? Russ Feingold does!

www.progressivesunited.org﻿

8/28/2011

Bloomberg Philanthropies donates $50 million to get coal-burning power plants out of our cities and move the U.S. toward our clean energy future.

France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia have all banned neonicotinoid pesticides with links to honeybee morbidity.

5/22/2011﻿

Brazilian government officials said that they would crack down on cattle ranchers in the Amazon after new data showed that deforestation there had increased by 26 percent in the nine months that ended in April, compared to with the same period a year before. (New York Times)

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5/19/2011

Where Nature reigns supreme!

Few areas inspire me like tropical rainforests bursting with life, and even the heavily trod El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico is no exception. When you see pink impatiens flowers and common house plants 10-50 times larger than we are accustomed to seeing them in our stateside pots and planters, you realize how important habitat is to the flourishing of a species. It is, of course, a bit anachronistic and romantic for a human to love a rainforest, because they are not at all particularly nourishing to human populations--who can only survive inside them in low densities, with short life spans. But their beauty and excess mesmerize and exhilarate me, and when you see so many plants, trees, and (albeit tiny) critters flourishing, you are swept up in the exuberance of what it means to be alive.

GOOD IDEA OF THE DAY: From Puerto Rico! Protect no-parking zones near corners, building entrances, fire hydrants, etc., with huge potted plants/trees! A beautiful reminder that cars are supposed to serve us, not vice versa.

5/4/2011

This week marked the end of the nearly 10-year hunt for Osama bin Laden. Can we have a war on poverty now? (More people die from that, you know.)

GOOD IDEA OF THE DAY: http://reuseconnection.com/﻿

1/10/2014

﻿Marc Hujer and Samiha Shafy﻿ have written a dramatic article for Der Spiegel contrasting two U.S. cities vulnerable to coastal erosion due to climate change: New Bern (North Carolina) and New York City. The article is "A Tale of Two Cities: America's Bipolar Climate Future﻿",

﻿Marc Hujer and Samiha Shafy﻿ have written a dramatic article for Der Spiegel contrasting two U.S. cities vulnerable to coastal erosion due to climate change: New Bern (North Carolina) and New York City. The article is "A Tale of Two Cities: America's Bipolar Climate Future﻿",

1/10/2014﻿﻿ ﻿

TWO STEPS BACK

3/30/2014﻿

The Guardian is reporting that the Intergovernmenal Panel on Climate Change is poised to release a frightening confirmation that climate change has already caused agriculture and disease problems all over the world. The report will also warn that it will not take much more warming before we see "abrupt and irreversible changes".

﻿The Hujer/Shafy﻿ article also describes a scenario where politicians reject climate science and pretend that sandy beaches can never change.

As a former North Carolinian who did a law school seminar on coastal law administration, it pains me and embarrasses me to see N.C. Republicans burying their heads in the sand. (And this metaphor may become literal!) The Research Triangle area of North Carolina has long been celebrated for having the highest concentration of PhD.s in the country, but apparently Republicans think the state was doing better when the economy revolved around furniture manufacturing and tobacco farming. Even if climate change were NOT real, the Carolina coast has already demonstrated constant shifts and would continue to shift because it has been doing so for eons. Nonetheless, the anti-science Republicans are also incapable of recognizing something like gradual retreat of North American glaciers over thousands and thousands of years as a factor in their reality.

I have many fond memories of trips to the Carolina coast, including one stay at a hotel whose pictorial history demonstrated that it had already lost 50 yards of shoreline since it had been built only a few decades earlier. When the ocean wipes out properties like that, I suppose the North Carolina Republicans will blame it on an Act of God--they would do well to remember that Noah's flood was also an act of God, and Noah escaped it because he took the warning signs seriously.

7/15/2013﻿﻿

Some would welcome another clean-up plan for the Chesapeake Bay, but all I see is another generation of talk without action.﻿

Garbage on the ocean floor--or the next recycling center?

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute did an extensive survey of garbage that has sunk to the ocean floor, and it does not paint a pretty picture. http://ht.ly/mrS2l I suppose future generations may be combing through THOSE garbage dumps if they get desperate enough to recover materials our recent generations have dumped?

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2/5/2013

The Davos World Economic Forum polled risk professionals on the greatest global risks, and the top five are: widening income gap between rich and poor, high government deficits, climate change, water shortages, and aging populations.

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8/8/2012

KFC's so-called "CEO of the Year" tells Greenpeace to piss off--they're going to keep cutting down the Indonesian rainforest for their disposable paper products, whether or not it drives the Sumatran tiger to extinction. Hello KFC-logo napkins and cups, goodbye 400 endangered tigers. Really? Tell KFC they are making a terrible mistake:

Air pollution levels from Deepwater Horizon spill similar to large urban area

In a press release quietly published shortly before Christmas, NOAA pointed out that water pollution, beach contamination, and wildlife casualties were not the only devastating results of the Gulf oil spill.

8/29/2011﻿

The U.S economy continues to slide into a deeper income inequality gap rivaling that which preceded the Great Depression. See what a plethora of economists and financiers have to say about how the rich-getting-richer-and-the-poor-getting-poorer is sucking the economic life out of our country:

An internal U.S.E.P.A. memo found that clothianidin was "highly toxic" to honeybees, but U.S.E.P.A. has still not banned it and has not released Bayer's study of its pesticide's chronic effects. Since clothianidin was introduced in 2003, U.S. bee colonies have declined 30-90%.

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5/22/2011﻿

Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest has increased almost six fold, new data suggests. Satellite images show deforestation increased from 103 sq km in March and April 2010 to 593 sq km (229 sq miles) in the same period of 2011, Brazil’s space research institute says. (BBC)

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5/19/2011

Puerto Rico's San Juan struck me as a city of hugely wasted potential during my visit last week. Hard to say how much of the problem is the economic downturn of the last three years and how much is endemic/historical. The economic development planning is about as uncreative as you can imagine, the entrepreneurial spirit is hard to perceive, the exquisitely designed neighborhood parks are largely neglected, and the drive for ecotourism is stifled by protectionist laws favoring tours arranged by mega hotels. With unfriendly bus drivers, incorrect maps, and a lack of pedestrian-oriented shops and restaurants, it's no wonder that the city remains almost unlivable without a car.

Ecologically, San Juan's estuary is visibly polluted, which begs the question of how bad the invisible pollutants might be. It is also overrun with "invasive" South American iguanas that have no predators, unless Puerto Ricans begin openly embracing them as a source of meat. I also saw invasive plant species in El Yunque national Forest as well as the central valley of the island, though overall the forests do not appear to be widely compromised as has occurred in other islands, like Hawaii. However, habitat loss threatens the Puerto Rican native species of firefly ("cucubano"), as well as the large leatherback turtle ("tinglar"), and who-knows-how-many species inbetween.

5/4/2011

Only six Navy Seals sent in to nab the most wanted terrorist in the world? A burial at sea before most of the world even knew he had been found? Everything about the story seems more surreal than celebratory after so many years of fruitless war and death (both military and civilian), not to mention the bankrupting of the American government and the transformation of our country to an alarmingly good imitation of a police state. And the bizarre use of the code name "Geronimo" only serves to remind us that the military continues to operate with such enormous blinders that it doesn't have the historical perspective to see the error in that choice. And if the military cannot get small things right, how will it ever have the historical perspective to see that something like the invasion of Iraq could not possibly have gone well? (History is not rocket science, but it does require paying attention. And it might be good not to put a Soviet Union "expert" in charge of Mideast policy, but I digress....)﻿

And so those with an historical memory already anticipate the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, the reconsolidation of Taliban power, the continuing expansion of vicious and violent subjugation of Afghan women, the allowance of the opium mafia to operate unchecked, and eventually, perhaps, the harboring of a new most-wanted-terrorist. And did I mention the massive deforestation in Afghanistan?